My work is inspired by dream images. The figures and places of dreams which would normally quickly slip away in the bustle of daily activity become present and real, existing not in a parallel universe, but in the same room with us. The images themselves are constructed from daily ephemera of our lives— magazines, envelopes from bills, food wrappers, and bits and pieces found on the street. When examined at close range the sources of the material can be discerned—a sugar wrapper or newspaper clipping. I wish to expose the contents of our lives, these things we touch and see on a daily basis, and to share the process of creation with the viewer by exposing the cuts, wrinkles, and rips as I reconstruct and reconfigure meaning. But from a distance, there is a form of alchemy that happens as the viewer steps back—the tiny pieces disappear into a mass of color, which confronts the viewer like an image made of paint on canvas.
The material and subject matter are both transient—the images used to sell or wrap products are quickly discarded and dreams are easily forgotten. But dream images, unlike the transient lore of a sparkling advertisement, if made to exist in form and color define our underlying feel of the world—the sense of its complexity and contradiction. Sunlit color and whimsical composition may exist simultaneously with intimations of memories and longing. My work explores what we perhaps do not want to know, and at the same time, want and need to know and to redeem.

Linnea Paskow ’98 is a visual artist who works with collage as her primary medium. She is an Assistant Professor at Pratt at Munson-Williams-Proctor in Utica, N.Y., where she teaches design and painting. She has an M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from Haverford. Recent exhibitions include The Armory Show at Pier 92, The New York Design Center, and The Painting Center. She will have a solo show at Kunstoffice in Berlin, Germany in May of 2007.